Format: ORAL

Sara Natale, Marco Canella, Garima Singh, Mariano Battistuzzi, Silvia Moschin, Anna Pasinato, Valentina Boscariol, Barbara Baldan, Francesco Dal Grande, Nicoletta La Rocca, Alessandro Alboresi

University of Padua, Padua, Italy

Understanding the traits that influence the responses of species to climate change is a crucial aspect of predicting future community composition and ecosystem function. Leaf functional traits are informative data to understand adaptation and acclimatization of species to ecological niches. Moreover, different plant species could have unique spectral reflectance signatures that might provide information to recognize and discriminate plant species. We characterized leaf morpho-functional traits of four species of Pinguicula with different ecological niches, from dump meadows to rocky walls. Specifically, we studied P. alpina, P. leptoceras, P. vulgaris and P. poldinii. Sampling activities took place in the Dolomites, north-eastern side of European Alpine Arc. We measured the following environmental parameters: temperature, relative humidity, light intensity, light spectrum. As leaf functional traits we considered leaf dry matter content and specific leaf area. In order to characterize the photosynthetic adaptation in alpine butterworts, we quantified leaf pigment contents and we measured photosynthesis in-situ and leaf reflectance (400-1000 nm). Also, we observed leaf surface features, trichomes and glands morphology via scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Despite a lower concentration of chlorophylls, P. poldinii and P. alpina showed a higher photosynthetic efficiency (e.g. yield of open photosystem II reaction centres in light) compared to the other two species. Since the different species showed different leaf reflectance spectra, our findings corroborate the ongoing hypothesis that leaf reflectance can be a useful tool to interpret data related to leaf traits, pigment composition and tissues organization. By providing a comprehensive scenario of leaf morpho-functional characteristics and leaf spectra signature, we show that the studied-species are coherently optimized to their prevailing environmental conditions.